


The Paleslut of Troll Sorrek

by RocksCanFly



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Sollux, Biblical References, Canon-Typical Violence, Chatting With People One Room Over (do these kids even know what doors are or what), Clowns, Gamzee Makara's The Cause Of The Feel And Nothing Is New, Gen, Kanaya Maryam Knows That Feel, Karkat's New To The Feel And Already HATES IT, Other, Puppets, Serendipity - Freeform, So Does Terezi, Sollux Captor Is A Plot Device And Is Salty About This, Terezi Pyrope's Powers Are Best Plot Device, Troll Culture, a complete and total disregard for any canon past the 5x showdown, an abundance of failed relationships, and choice, and impossible silly fan-theories that gave rise to an emotionaly over-wraught novella about fate, fingerpainting with blood as a holy rite, warnings for:
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 11:57:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4478495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocksCanFly/pseuds/RocksCanFly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story about how things might have gone if the kids hadn't made it to the meteor right away. Terezi Pyrope has a dream and Karkat Vantas is forced to make a choice regarding his moirail. Meanwhile, Gamzee Makara is standing at a crossroads of his own, Kanaya Maryam is trying to keep history from repeating itself, and Sollux Captor just wants to drive the fucking ship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Paleslut of Troll Sorrek

>  
> 
> **Delila Wuz A Bluh Bluh Bluh Huge B8tch!!! _, Troll Kanye West, oil on canvas_**
> 
> * * *
> 
>  
> 
> _And it came to pass afterward, that he loved a lowblood in the valley of Sorrek, whose name was Delila._
> 
> _And the lords of the Empire came up to her, and said unto her, this glubbing highblooded landwelling juggalo asshole is literally krilling ev-reef-one we send after him. If you entice him into rev-eel-ing his sea-crets unto you, we shell be mer-sea-ful and spare your lowblood ass._
> 
> _And Delila said to Samson, Tell me, I pray thee, wherein thy immortality lieth, and wherewith thou mightest be bound to afflict thee._
> 
> _-Troll Marilyn Monroe, The Vagina Monologs_

* * *

 

 

**> Karkat: Flip the fuck out.**

No. Fuck off. You’re busy.

You and your awful, terrible excuse for a moirail are currently lying in a pile. It's not a particularly good one- its bumpy and uncomfortable, the sharp edges of romance novels that couldn't have been more wrong about EVERYTHING if they tried dig into your back and every time you shift so much as a wayward walkfrond a cacophony of horns goes off.

The noise is grating and it makes it so you're almost too terrified to shift the big lug's head on your lap so his ridiculous horns aren't jamming their way into the soft, stab-able meat of your midsection. After the necessary re-arrangements are made and the both of you are settled into a position resembling comfortable, you make every effort you can not to move too much. You're trying to avoid making as much noise as possible, which makes you question why you put horns in this pile in the first place because, honestly, stupid fucking move right there--

\--But you've never been very good at foresight, have you? Which is why you find yourself in this place, at this time, with the pathetic, monstrous asshole's nug cradled in your lab and a dose of high-concentrate sopor based tranquilizer hidden behind you back wrapped in a damp washcloth.

You don't know which one of those weapons turns your stomach more, but we'll get to that later.

For now you can just focus on what you're here to do.

The bulge-shrivelingly awful, despicable, cull-worthy thing you are about to do.

As soon as you can get up the _guts_.

While you gather your erstwhile shame globes, you contemplate the fuck-nut clown reject nuzzling his skull into your lap. Gamzee’s hair is still clean from yesterday, though it’s as much of a fucking mess as ever. You run your fingers through it, working fruitlessly to try and straighten it into some semblance of decency. He smiles up at you. His horns spear a pyral-sprite plush as he pushes his face further into the knot that is your gut. The symbolism threatens to choke you.

The pile is as uncomfortable as it was five minutes ago, but Gamzee's started up purring, and the pleasant coolness of his head in your lab settles your stomach. You can feel more and more tension leaking out your shoulders the longer you cradle his nug. You remember what it’s like to have your jaw unclenched when it relaxes suddenly on you, sending a rush of pleasant sensation tingling up your face and down your back. You feel loose and pacified. There is a warm, pleasant buzz building in the back of your brain. It’s an interesting accompaniment to the screaming.

This is the last fucking place you want to be.

**> Karkat: Start from the beginning.**

Sure, nookwipe. You might as well, anyways. Maybe, if you think about it enough, you’ll find a way out of this gog-forsaken mess.

It’s about as likely as Strider magically transforming into something besides a douche, but what the hell. You’re already screwed. A little flashback can’t hurt.

It can only give you a little more time.

**> Karkat: Be the blind one from two days ago.**

You are the blind one! And you are very upset! And almost, but not quite, scared! You're dripping day-sweat, and the dream behind your eyes refuses to fade, flashing again before you when you blink in the darkness.

You need to find Karkat. There is something you need to tell him.

It is not a conversation you are looking forward to.

You find Mr. Cherry Lollipop moping in the computer room. And by moping you of course mean typing furiously and cursing at the screen of his terminal like it pailed his lusus.

“Karkat,” you say abruptly. You do not have it in you to tease him right now, even though you smell the green text on his screen that hints at the fresh-cut grass of the Jade-human, and she is one of your favorite things to poke him about. But not tonight. You don't feel like teasing tonight.

All you _do_ feel is vaguely nauseous.

His chair squeaks when he swivels to face you, and you know he is ready to throw some halfhearted insult your way for interrupting whatever silly conversation he was having. You hear a click as his mouth snaps shut.

You think you must look awfully dire for him to be so quiet.

“What?” he gripes, but you can hear the concern he's so awful at hiding. “Is anything wrong?”

You raise a single brow above the rim of your glasses.

He exhales noisily and backtracks. “Okay, that’s a really fucking stupid question. Is anything wrong that wasn’t wrong five hours ago?”

You nod, sniffing at the air. You smell greasepaint. This is not the place to have the conversation you desperately do not want to have.

You gesture for him to follow you. You need to do this somewhere private. There are ears on this rock that do not need to hear what you have to say.

“What the fuck?” he questions, falling into step besides you anyways. “Terezi, what’s wrong? Talk to me.”

You can hear that he is nervous. You wish, not for the first time, that you had something pleasant to offer him instead of more pain.

You reach your rooms, and you lock the door. You turn to him, gesture for him to sit on your pile.

“Excuse my bluntness, but I’m not fucking sitting anywhere until you tell me what the hell is going on, Pyrope.”

It is your turn to exhale noisily.

“Karkat,” you say, “I had a dream.”

“Daymares aren’t exactly news. Why all the fucking secrecy?”

“It was not a daymare,” you say firmly. “It wasn't a normal dream at all. Karkat, I think it was a prophecy- I get them sometimes, because of that whole Seer thing. They’re usually delightfully vague, gory, and overall entirely useless!”

“Okay, and?”

“But this was different,” you continue. A shudder runs down your spine as you recall the dream. “It was gory but it wasn’t vague. I’ve never had a vision so clear before and _Karkat,_ ” you tighten your hands around your cane, gripping the handle reflexively as you resist reaching a hand to touch your own eyes. “It was about Gamzee.”

There’s a gentle thud as he plops down into the pile. He grunts weakly at you- a signal you take as permission to sit next to him. His breathing is stilted. You can tell he is bracing himself for pain. You know that it will not be enough!

Over the course of the next two hours you tell him about the dream. The prophecy. The horrible future hurtling towards you. You tell him about Lord English, about the child gods on the lonely planet, about Jade and the heroes you have yet to meet.

You tell him about the crater, and about how you both of you will die.

You tell him how the universe, how every universe is going to end, and how even your ghosts will perish.

And you tell him about the hand in the center of it all, the single domino that starts the chain that ended Alternia and took everything from all of you.

You tell him about Gamzee.

When you finish, he is silent. He is very still, except his leg, which you can feel bouncing up and down very rapidly. You know what's going on in his head right now- He is doing an acrobatic what-the-fuck-ever off the handle. The handle is gone. He has flipped right out of his ever-hating thinkpan.

Then he _laughs_. It sounds like a barkbeast coughing.

“Karkat?” you ask warily, scooting just a bit away from him. You can smell his teeth, the rictus stretch of his smile. Your guts are tight as the not-so-metaphoric noose dangling above your heads.

“Terezi,” he says, looking at you in what you know is his best approximation of paternal exasperation. You taste the air. It’s not a very good approximation. You think he looks a little constipated.

“Are you fucking high?”

Your hackles would rise if you had them. As it is, you are frustrated. You hate it when he’s dumb.

“Karkat, this is very serious! Gamzee is dangerous, more dangerous than we knew!”

He barks again. You smells his smile stretching, his eyes going wide as he faces you. You want to wipe the smirk off his face with your fist.

“Do you actually expect me to believe that Gamzee of all people is capable of all that?”

You grit your teeth. “Did you think he was capable of killing Equius and Nepeta?” you ask quietly. You have all underestimated Gamzee before. It did not end well.

You will not allow yourself to underestimate him again. And you won’t allow Karkat to either. This is bigger than you, than all of you.

His constipated smile falls, replaced by familiar red of an angry frown.

“That was different,” he mutters, clenching his fists. He curls into himself, bringing his knees up to his chest. He feels very small pressed against you.

“Look, I won’t let him do anything. He’s my moirail, watching out for him and making sure he doesn’t do stupid shit is my job now, right? As long as I don’t fuck up-“

“It is not a question of you fucking up! Gamzee is _dangerous_ , Karkat, and you won’t be able to keep an eye on him forever!”

“I can try! And what else are we supposed to do?”

“We need to figure out a plan. He might be your moirail, but that doesn’t mean you can stop him!”

“So I’ll talk him out of it!”

“Karkat, you _can’t_. He’s selfish, and arrogant, and worse, he’s a zealot! He’ll never listen to you!’

“Back off! You don’t know him!” He is starting to get very shouty. Your hand tightens around your cane.

“Karkat, Mr. Cherry Lollipop- shut up!” You’re shouting at him. You _hate_ shouting, it’s inelegant, it makes you look weak, out of control- but he needs to get that this is serious. That you’re serious, the most serious you’ve ever been with him.

Karkat shuts up.

“He’s going to kill us,” you continue, calming. “And he’ll kill Rose and Jade and Dave and John. He’ll kill a million people we’ve never met, and it will be our fault for not stopping him when we had the chance! He’s selfish, and arrogant, and he’s _terrible_ and Karkat- the monster at the end of this story is the one he calls _god_. Gamzee is a religious fanatic, and he’ll hang us all with a smile if it means pleasing his precious Messiahs!”

Karkat explodes. “I fucking knew it! You hate him, don’t you? You hate him and-,” he sounds very sick for a second, the thought makes him ill and he clings to it like a limpet, “- and you’re trying to manipulate me, to turn me against him, aren’t you? That’s so fucking low, Pyrope, that’s terrible, you-,” he swallows. He draws back. The pile shakes. “ _You’re_ terrible,” he bites out. “You _hate_ him and now you’re playing your stupid little mind games like you always do! Do you really think I’m so fucking blind that I can’t see what you’re doing? You _sick_ -“

He stops talking, and begins to gurgle and curse. It sounds like something is holding his nose closed.

You smell cherries. Your fist is wet. You realize that you have punched him very hard in the face!

“You moron.” Your voice does not tremble. When he doesn’t reply except for a few more gurgles, all the anger leeches out of you. You just feel… hollow. You look for the words that need to be said, if you want to get through to him, if you want him to see things the way you do.

“Stop acting like a wriggler. You pity him, I _get_ it,” you start. You don’t really get it. To be honest, you have no idea how _anyone_ can pity Gamzee Makara. But this is what Karkat needs to hear, so you’ll say it no matter how much you don’t believe in it.

“You pity him more than I thought you could pity anyone, I can **_smell_** it on you,” you continue, pulling a face. “But moirails are not supposed to be blind. You know he’ll do it- now stop acting like a grub and help me figure out a plan!”

You _feel_ the glare he levels at you over the fingers still clutching his bleeding nose. It’s super ineffective! You know he is trying very hard to stay angry. But you also know that he’ll come to his senses once he stops throwing a fit.

You sit back in the pile. You sniff around a bit, rummaging beneath you until you find what you were seeking. You hand him your least favorite scalemate, a purple one. He accepts it grudgingly, and presses it to his face.  You don’t apologize for punching him.

You are, in truth, very _very_ sorry. Not for the blood. He deserved that.

But no one deserves to have to make the choice between their moirail and the universe.

Minutes tick by.

He releases a breath.

When he speaks the sound of his voice is muffled by the scalemate he’s clutching to his face.

“There has to be a way to stop him,” he murmurs. The scalemate wooshes as he squeezes it tightly, and it smells damp. Gross. You think you’ll let him keep it.

You scooch over to press against him.

You ready yourself to be cruel, because it is kinder than allowing these things to go unsaid.

(You have learned your lesson about letting things go unsaid- It was a very painful one!)

“There’s one,” you say casually as you try (and fail!) not to think of wings.

The pile shifts as he winces. Karkat shakes his head next to yours, face still hidden in the plush.

“Nope. Fuck that. We’re not- _nope_. I’m his fucking _moirai_ l, you spiny brat. I’ll talk him around. He’ll listen. He did earlier, right?"

“I’ll talk him around,” he finishes firmly. But not very. It is less a plan and more a prayer.

You feel the bottom drop out of your heart. You have never believed in prayer.

What you do believe in is visions, and justice and patterns. When you think of Gamzee and Karkat you think not of them but of a girl lying in an out-of-the-way room, two levels below and three rooms to the right of your own. You stabbed her through the chest not six hours ago! You are painfully aware that she has not even begun to rot.

“Karkat-“ you start, but you do not get very far. Your nubby-horned leader shakes his head, still hiding in a sea of purple plush. He faces towards the door. He will not turn towards you. He wipes his nose noisily, sets down the scalemate , and clampers off the pile. He is out the door before you can do anything.

You listen to the echoes of him walking away. A bit down the hallway, you hear him break into a run.

He has left the scalemate. It is very damp, and you can smell salt and copper.

You ask yourself if you have ever known Karkat Vantas to cry.

**> Terezi: Be the blubbering baby.**

You are not the blubbering baby.

This is because:

A- You are not a fucking human wriggler. You are not pink and soft, you do not shit in a sack and wallow in it, and you don’t need a fucking lusus hovering over you day and night. You are a grown-ass troll.

B- You are not _blubbering_. You are in control of this situation. You have a plan. You are the strategist- it is you. When things go to shit, you always have a plan.

You can fix this.

The salt crusting below your ocular sacks is from how proud you are of your brilliant plan for dragging your collective asses out of this fire. The plan is genius. It will fix everything, and there will be no corpses involved. You are a genius strategist, the best friend-leader. You can save everyone.

_(You are the greatest liar you know_ )

You need your fucking moirail.

**> Karkat: Seek the Highblood.**

Call him “Highblood” one more time and I’ll rip your bulge off and pail you with it, douchebag.

After _that_ narrative-breaking empty threat, you return to searching for Gamzee.

You find him in one of the labs.

He is a fucking _mess._

There is blood everywhere.

**> Karkat: Jam with your moirail.**

Not right now. You’re busy washing out this asshole’s hair. You’ll pile later, when he’s clean.

You pointedly ignore _what_ you’re washing out of his hair.

He’d hidden the corpses again by the time you finished cursing him out and gotten back from retrieving a few of Equius’s old towels.

He wouldn’t tell you where he put them, the prick.

He wouldn’t let you wash the – _the pictures_ \- off the walls either.

“You’re such an asshole,” you mutter at him for the fiftieth time today. He grins up at you from the sink where you’re washing his hair. He wouldn’t let you put him in the ablution trap.

Something about his face.

“Pity you too, best friend,” he drawls. His voice is higher than it was six hours ago. It’s still much lower than what you’re used to.

You wonder where his equilibrium is going to fall.

You don’t think about Terezi and her dreams.

“Yeah, yeah,” you mutter as you pour more shampoo into the tangled clusterfuck that passes for his hair.  You’ve been scrubbing at it for twenty minutes now. You are _nowhere_ near done- you have to pause every other fucking second to pick apart a knot. The greasy coils of hair wrap around your fingers like little snakes, threatening to trap your hands.

“So what’s this bullshit with you and painting shitty pictures?” you ask, more to fill the quiet than out of any real curiosity.

He grins, arms squeezing tight around that weird… puppet thing he’s been carrying around. It creeps you right the fuck out, but you’re sure as fuck not about to try and take it from him.

“Miracles, brother,” her drawls. “The Mirthful Messiah’s famous for his pictures. Paintin’s part of keeping the mother fucking faith. Creating something out of nothing but color and the thoughts up in your own thinkpan, you know?”

You grimace, working a particularly large tangle. “Painting shitty pictures on the wall is part of your fucked up clown cult?” you ask skeptically. The knot seems to be wrapped around something-

“Naw, they ain’t just motherfuckin’ _pictures_ , man. Here, lemme give you the low down on how its all up and part of, like, ceremony and shit. Some people ask other motherfuckers why you can’t just use _paint_.”

The word ‘paint’ is said with disgust, as if Gamzee had tred in something nasty. Then again, with the state of his hair, Karkat’s not sure if the troll would even notice, let alone care, if he stepped in something heinous.

Gamzee continues, “You can’t use _paint_ , right? It’s gotta be blood, otherwise the pictures don’t up and mean a damn thing. There’s no substance to it if there’s no sacrifice. I used to think that was kinda mean but I’m startin to see it now that I’m off the sopor. It’s like friendship, you know?”

“Wait, so painting with other trolls body fluids is how you make friends with you weird cult deities?” You ask, disinterestedly disgusted as you come across a shard of bone sticking in the mass. You flick it away.

Gamzee lights up. “Yeah, man!” He exclaims. “It’s like, a conversation between us and them. A way to talk about scripture, heaven’n’hell, all that miraculous shit.”

You’re incredulous. First off all, the pictures you saw on the wall were mostly stick doodles of him and Tavros making out which, wow, do not want to touch that right now. Or, you know. Ever.

Second of all—“Wait, wait, wait, don’t tell me you believe in that heaven-or-hell shit,” you snarl. “That’s human wriggler stuff. You don’t get punished for being a blistering bag of shit or rewarded for being a bootlicking pansy when you die. Aradia said so.”

Gamzee’s expression darkens a little, and all of a sudden, you’re paying a lot more attention to what he’s saying while you try to get this gross shit out of his hair.

“Scripture’s all a motherfucker’s got when he grows up on his lonesome, brother. ‘Sides, can’t you motherfucking see it? Bro, we’re already _in_ hell. Hell is this whole whack-ass motherfucking universe. Shit’s _corrupted_. The trick is getting the fuck out and into a bitchtits new one. That’s where the Messiah comes in,” he drawls. He’s hugging the puppet again, it’s creepy little eyes staring up at you emptily.

“Things weren’t that bad,” you protest. “Sure it was mostly full of assholes, but it’s better than it being full of corpses!” You’ve almost gotten to the core of the knot. It’s something squishy. Gross.

“You just don’t see it bro,” he rumbles, pushing his head up into your hand. You swear his sclera are more of an orange color than they were five seconds ago. His voice is getting that weird low echo to it, and it is taking the _full strength_ of your rectal muscles not to lose your shit when one gangly arm unclenches from around the puppet to grasp your wrist gently. Resisting the urge to shit yourself and run, you try to focus on working the knot open. “Trolls that get all up on the fake ass shit, the stuff made up by one troll to tell another troll what’s up? The heinous blasphemies that ain’t got nothing to do with what’s real and just focus in on the fake and tarnish everything right and righteous? The ones who take all those jank ass rules and paint it up to be scripture? Like it’s truer than the Truth and realer than the Real? Who cling to it even when it’s all crumbled out from beneath them? Maybe they’re better off as corpses.”

You open your mouth to reply, because wow, and then you brain shorts out because—

Oh Gog. Oh gog oh gog oh sweet fucking nook licking troll jegus- It’s _brain_. It’s- it’s glistening, green-grey **_brain_**. His hair is tangled around a piece of Nepeta’s-

You’re going to be sick. You’re going to be _so_ sick.

“Karbro?” Gamzee asks, suddenly concerned and guileless as a baby barkbeast. The queer look’s gone out of his face and his voice is higher and he’s looking at you like he’s a fucking _barkbeast_. He’s looking at you like the most innocent  thing in Alternia when he’s got a fucking piece of Nepeta’s _brain_ in his fucking _hair_ and it hits you again that he _killed_ her and-

Oh gog.

You shake your head once, keep your mouth sealed shut. You don’t trust yourself not to scream if you open it, so you just shove his head back into the water as calmly as you can and try to rinse the _thing_ out his hair without touching it. You don’t want to even look at it, but it’s clinging and it’s sticky with dried blood and who knows _what_ the fuck else-

You reach in and knock it loose. You almost vomit all over your moirail.

When you let Gamzee back up he’s visually pouting, chin hooked over the of that damned puppet. You washed off a bit of his paint. As in his whole forehead is bare grey. Oops.

“Not cool bro,” he mumbles, clinging tighter to the felt monstrosity in his grasp. The puppet looks at you with its blank eyes. You shiver.

“You almost done? I feel mother fucking disgraceful with my face all messed up like this,” Gamzee whines, snapping your attention back to him and his smudged paint. “It’s a blashpeme to be walking around lookin all jacked up like this. Disrespectful to the motherfucking covenant.”

“It’s just paint, moron,” you mutter. You’re nowhere near done with his hair, but you also _really_ don’t want to be touching it anymore.

You really don’t want to be near him right now. You are a terrible moirail and a terrible troll to get squeamish over a bit of grey matter, but if you find another piece of anyone in his hair you are going to empty your digestive sack all over him.

“Hey, can you manage to finish up here? I’m not sure if I trust you not to fuck up and drown yourself in the trap, but I really need to talk to Sollux about something,” you tell him as you hand him a towel for his hair. He looks a little mulish at the thought of you leaving so soon, and the guilt is heavy in your stomach, but you- You _really_ need to get away from him. At least until he no longer has pieces of _people_ in his _**hair**_.

You decide on an evasive tactic. It’ll make you feel like a douche, but at least you won’t have to think about the brown stains on his teeth or what _exactly_ the mulit-colored gunk clinging to his scalp actually _is_ for a little while.

“Unless you’re letting me in the ablution trap with you there’s not much I can do, asshole. You got that crap everywhere, and I’m troll Betty White if you’ve bathed once in the last week.” You’re pretty sure he’ll go along with it now that the threat of someone seeing him without his paint on is hanging over him.

His shoulders slump a little more, and he wraps his skinny arms around himself. His shirt got soaked from sink, and you actually can’t believe that someone so tall can be so skinny. With his mass of hair sticking down- he’s the most pathetic thing you’ve ever seen, creepy scars and all.

Your heart hurts.

You ignore it.

“Yeah, I gotcha bro. I know I’m pretty motherfucking grody right now- bein’ clean hasn’t really been the first thing in my nug with all the crazy that’s been poking its way into our lives,” he says quietly, hugging the puppet a little tighter. “I get it you don’t want to be around me or nuthin’.”

You want to slam your head into a wall- mostly because you feel like the worst kind of scumbag for leaving him. He looks like someone drank his last bottle of shitty soda.

You reach up for a damp pap on his cheek, careful of the paint. “I’ll see you in like, two hours, moron. You can manage to clean yourself and get to my block by then, right?” You say it quietly, and his eyes light up. He gets this stupid dopey smile on his face and lopes off for the ablution block. You sigh.

One moment he’s going on about new universes and god and then he has the audacity to pout at you when there’s blood _literally_ on his hands and brain chunks in his hair, and then next thing he’s bounding off like a fucking wriggler with grubcream at the prospect of a fucking _cuddle_.

You don’t know what the hell to think with this guy.

You go track down Sollux, because you said you would and you might as well.

Hopefully he’s not dead.

** > Karkat: Bee the dead guy. **

Not dead _yet_ , asshole.

But you’re getting pretty close. Launching a giant hunk of rock and metal at a sun with nothing but your half fried pan is actually pretty difficult. Go fucking figure.

If these assholes don’t win the game after you’re dead, you’re gonna haunt the shit out of ‘em.

Speaking of bulge-sucking incompetents, here comes KK. You can tell it’s him because he’s the only one left alive who stomps everywhere he goes, what with VK and EQ being dead and everything.

“Hey asswipe,” you slur, turning to face his general direction. Funny. You don’t remember it being this difficult to talk. The constant sharp, stabbing feeling in your brain must finally be getting to you.

KK makes a weird garbled noise. He sounds pretty grossed out. You figure you must look pretty nasty, seeing as you can feel your blood literally _squirting_ out your ocular sockets to drip down your cheeks and steaming out of your auditory shells. Heh heh. Gross.

“Hey fuckass,” he says weakly. He plops down next to where you’re blindly facing towards what you’re pretty sure is the viewport. You shove him a little further from you, impatient. Having other people close right now is _not_ a good feeling. Even the electricity you can feel in his brain is painful with your nerves thrown as wide open as they are.

You hear him shifting around uncomfortably. He’s quiet though, so you’re guessing he’s settled for glaring at you half-heartedly instead of bitching you out. It hits you that he probably feels guilty about you dying. It’s really not that surprising. You’ve always known KK was the exact kind of idiot to think he’s important enough to have a hand in every shitty thing that happens in the world. Takes one to know one, right?

You sit in uncomfortable silence.

He clears his throat. “Terezi said you’re going to die,” he mutters quietly.

You laugh. It hurts like a bitch, but it’s worth it to hear the angry little grunt-squeak he always makes when he gets offended over stupid shit.

“You’re probably the only one of us who hadn’t figured that shit out yet, KK. I’m launching a fucking meteor at a _sun_ with my _brain_. And I mean, shit. Look at me, I’m more of a mess than your shitty excuses for quadrants. Of _course_ I’m going to die.”

“Well excuse me for trying to be sensitive about this! Just because you’re a heartless asshole doesn’t mean I am!” He barks at you. He almost sounds angry- but you can hear an undertone that you’re not entirely sure you used to be able to. Maybe there _are_ some perks to be blind.

Anyway, there’s something wrong here between you two that you’re pretty sure isn’t just you dying.

You hate dealing with his emotional bullshit.

“You wanna tell me what’s wrong, or sit here like a pouting wriggler?”

He’s silent for a minute. You regret giving him the second option.

He sighs. You think, vaguely, that it’d be nice to have one fucking conversation with this asshole when he doesn’t sound like the world’s resting on his shoulders.

“Terezi had a dream,” he mumbles.

“So?”

“ _So_ , it- it wasn’t just a dream. Some sort of dumb Mind player/Seer thing, I don’t know. But she saw the future, or _a_ future? And- ,”he pauses, takes in a deep breath. “AndshetoldmeGamzee’sgoingtoendtheuniverseandthatwe’reallfuckedifIdon’tfindawaytostophimand shitshitshitshitshit _what the fuck am I supposed to **do**_?”

Tentatively, you grope out with one hand in the general direction of his voice. Ignoring the sharp up-spike of pain between your eyes, you draw him over to you. He slumps into your chest, gummy bloodstains and all, and sighs.

You sit together, the two of you broken and tired children hunched up against the cold metal wall of a facility built inside a meteor hurtling through space at what you pray is escape velocity towards a new universe.

Silence stretches out, and you’re hit again by the absurdity of it all- how ridiculous are you, you and this nubby horned ball of troll and pain, to ever dream you had a chance of winning this shitty, rigged game?

Ree---lly ridiculous, you think with a pang, and you offer up the only suggestion that you can think of that will let him live long enough to keep clinging to that stupid dream.

“Kill him?” you venture, and immediately he tenses up against you. Before you know it he’s shoved away and the moment’s broken.

“No, _no_ , no- _fuck_ _you_ , Captor,” he hisses. “Fuck you, fuck Terezi, I’m not killing him, I’m not letting _anyone_ kill him. He’s my goddamn moirail, do you heartless bastards _understand_ that? I don’t even fucking know how it happened, by I do know this- Gamzee Makara’s _mine_. And if you think-“ he stands up, his voice breaks. You hear a whoosh, and you know his sickles are in his hands. He has flipped right off the fucking handle.

He growls, or tries to. It comes out more like a very angry whimper. “If you think for one fucking second that I will _let_ you or anyone else touch a hair on his head-“

A wet, hacking sound cuts him off, and you know it’s you because you feel like another hole’s being blown in your chest.

You _laugh_. It’s horrible, you’re horrible, he’s horrible, this whole fucked up situation, this stupid game, it’s all _horrible_. And you can’t help but laugh, because-

“What are you going to do, asshole?” you snark through the garbled, hacking coughs. You can feel blood pooling in your throat. “What do you think you can do to me, KK? Kill me? I’m already fucking dead! What will you do if I decide to take GZ out of the picture too?”

And like that there’s the edge of his sickle, pressed up against your throatstem. His snarling mouth with its tombstone teeth presses against your ear.

Something wet that isn’t yours trickles down your neck.

You wonder if you have ever known Karkat Vantas to cry.

“You want this rock to be stuck in the void of space, dickbag?” you say softly. Contrary to logic and all that shitty bravado you were just spitting, you _do_ want every moment you have left- and a slit throat is not conducive to that at _all_.

“We’ll find a way out,” he lies, and you know that he knows it’s a lie. If he kills you before you’re done every one of you, including his precious shithead murder-clown moirail, is fucked ten ways to sideways.

“No, you won’t. And unless you let me or someone put him down, everything we’ve done is going to be for _shit_ , KK.”

“I won’t let you touch him, Sollux,” he whispers, and it’s angry but it’s desperate and choked and there’s an echo in your chest and a pressure behind your eyes that’s just a reminder of how much you hate him. Because he’s going to kill you, one of his best friends and best enemies, over a psychopathic clown cultist who already murdered two of your friends.

You hate him, and you envy him.

There’s a dead girl lying in some room with her head torn off by some asshole with facepaint and a mental disorder. She has a ridiculous amount of hair and a gaping fuchsia hole in her chest and you couldn’t save her.  All because you were too stupid to see where Eridan was going and too complacent to kill him before he had the chance to hurt her.

It is (was) common and legally accepted practice on Alternia to kill any troll that presented a reasonable threat to your quadrant. Ex-moirails are (were) high on the list of accepted targets. But there were only twelve of you left, so you let Eridan live. You weren’t careful enough, and now she’s dead.

And Karkat is so much more cautious than you, so much better at this troll disease called friendship than you could ever be. The universe on the line and he’s holding a blade to the throat of his best chance of saving it because serendipity’s a bitch but destiny is worse and the boy he had the misfortune to fall in love with is on the wrong side of the equation.

But Gamzee isn’t the only quadrant KK has on this fucking rock.

You suck in a breath that rattles every one of your ribs and go in for the kill.

“He’s going to kill everyone, KK,” you say softly. “Even Terezi.”

You’ve hit your target. His grip on you slackens, the blade fall a bit from your throat. You take your chance and turn, tackle him over and pin him under you. He goes down like a ragdoll.

You stare blindly into where you think his ocular sacks are. You can feel cool air across the wet on your neck. You’re actually kind of glad to be blind right now.

He doesn’t struggle, and you wait for him to talk again.  You don’t want to kill KK. You don’t know if you’re capable, actually. (You refuse to think about whether you’re talking physical or emotional capability. You’ve had enough introspection for today.)

When he finally speaks again, he’s as quiet as you have ever heard him, and that breaks something in you.

“How could he?” He asks you, his voice weak and trembling as a leaf and _damn you_ he’s so pathetic you could _pap_ him.

You sigh. KK’s a whimpering grub, and he’s dumb, and he loves that piece of shit and doesn’t understand a thing about him. But you do, don’t you?

There’s one thing in the universe that you and Gamzee Makara have in common besides your unfortunate soft spots for a shouty nubble-horned fucktard.

And that’s weird troll caste-based brain shit.

“GZ’s not,” you start, and you pause because it hits you that you are comforting a guy who was just threatening to kill you over a guy who’s going to try to kill all of you.

This is straight out of one of KK’s crappy romance novels.

Fuck. Your. _Shitty_. **_Life_**.

“GZ’s not… he’s not like you, okay? Things that you see, that you feel, that you think are true and obvious and just the way things are… that’s not what he sees, KK. It’s not how he thinks. You see murder, he probably sees some weird cultist ritual that’s absolutely necessary to the survival of reality. Highbloods are fucked in the head, alirght? Almost as fucked up as _I_ am. He can’t help it.” You trail off. Your hand twitches at your side, held back from touching his cheek by the sheer power of your will (and your total lack of desire to accidentally pap him on the ocular globe and get shit for it) alone. A long moment stretches about between you.

It’s uncomfortable as fuck. So you take the unsaid implication hanging in the air and use it to pop the silence like a bubble. “And, I’m sorry—“ you continue, gripping his sides, “—but you can’t help him either.”

He curls up towards you, burying his head into your chest. His horns dig into your ribcage and his claws twist tight into your shirt. “I just can’t believe he’d want this,” he chokes out. “I’m his moirail, _dammit_ , doesn’t he give a shit that I’ll die, too?”

You sigh again, resisting the urge to cradle him to you. Sighing seems to be a theme today.

“Even if he does, the thing in his head doesn’t. It’s hard to think about, but GZ: the brainwashed murder-clown zealot with a religious boner for Lord English isn’t the same person as Gamzee Makara: Karkat Vantas’s palemate. But Gamzee: sopor addict isn’t him either,” you reply. It’s the shittiest thing in the universe that you’re uniquely qualified to explain this to him and that Eridan couldn’t manage to kill you properly, so you’re unfortunately alive to do it. “I don’t think any one of us really knows the guy. Except maybe you.”

He shifts beneath you, letting his hands drop limply from your shirt. You roll off of him. You hear the whoosh as he re-captchalogues his sickles. He plops down across from you.

The silence is shitty and unbearable. So you keep talking.

“Look,” you say, making a half-hearted gesture towards his general direction. “Let’s cut the bullshit, okay? He pities you. He pities you so much I almost vomited with how sickeningly pale the two of you were when you shoosh-papped him up on the deck. There’s no mistaking that kind of irreconcilably saccharine bullcrap- he’s practically shitting diamond’s over you, asshole. It’s actually kinda gross.”

You shuffle forward and (in what you personally think is the nicest thing you’ve ever done for anyone ever) hug his stupid, murderous, blind little face to your chest. He lets you cradle him and, but for the fact that he just threatened to kill you and you’ve heard the way his voice sounds when he talks about Gamzee, it’d feel damningly close to infidelity.

Your bloodpusher aches, and you know it’s not just because you’re dying. You stare down blindly down at where you know his stupid nubbly little horns are and wonder not for the first time how it all would have gone if the game had never happened.

Guilt clenches in your gut, because he’s vulnerable right now and you’re an ass, and you try to bury the feeling with your face in his hair. It smells nice, like soap and water, and it’s a little damp. Some of the coarse strands go up your nose, and that tickles, and you realize too late that you’re wiping your brain blood all over his hair.

And in that moment, with him warm and there, you can’t bring yourself to give a shit. You feel… content.

Which is your queue to ruin everything.

“But Karkat, that doesn’t mean he won’t _kill_ you,” you mumble.

He tenses and, anticipating him, you tighten your arms before he can pull away. You keep squeezing until he relaxes. He still hasn’t said a word.

“Here’s the thing about weird-caste-brain-shit,” you tell him, face still buried so your words whuffle through his thick hair. “It’s weird and it’s caste-based brain shit. He can’t help what he is any more than I can help being a flip-flopping asshole or you can help being a bleeding heart little crybaby or Kanaya can help being a weird sparkly vampire. I don’t know much about the Mirthful Church, but I do know they brainwash the shit out of their dedicates. They’re all he’s ever known. So that’s always going to come first, whether he pities you or not.”

Your dumb speech leaves a sour taste in your mouth. You hate weird-caste-brain-shit, you hate talking about it, and it doesn’t help that it’s not yours that you’re talking about.

Karkat’s still tense in your arms, and you can tell that you haven’t really broken through to him, even if you’re pretty sure he’s not going to try to kill you anymore. You let him go and stand.

He doesn’t move, and you know he needs to be moving. None of you have time for this his emotional drama. It’s stupid and it sucks and a larger part of you than you want to admit wants to bundle his stubby, angry little frame in your own and protect him from this thing you know he has to do.

But that part of you is fucking stupid for multiple reasons. The most important of which is, as you’ve stated, you _really_ don’t have time for this. He needs to get moving, and you need to focus on your job before your shitty body gives out and you leave these dumbasses marooned in a dying universe.

You take a breath.

**> Sollux: Bee the asshole.**

You’re the asshole. If there’s one thing besides computers and fucking up you’ve ever really been good at, it’s being the asshole.

You are simply the best there is.

You let your voice go acidic. “So find your shameglobes and stop _glubbing_ already. GZ needs to go down, and he’s not going to go down easy. You’re our best chance,” you say, and you’re being as spiteful as you can be because Karkat needs to be angry now, even if it’s at you, because angry’s practically the only way he knows how to really _think_ , and you’re not joking about GZ not going down easy. You know what he did to Equius and Nepeta.

You go in for the final blow.

“And if you can’t do it- get out of the way for someone who _can_.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story that's been hanging around cluttering up my hard drive for years now. It's been decidedly destroyed by the progression of canon and is largely built around my personal answer to why Gamzee Makara can't die and Kurloz could. It's also an answer to the plethora of wonderful Homestuck fic I've read throughout the years that have focused on the relationship between one Gamzee Makara (Motovationless Murderclown Extrodinaire) and Karkat Vantas (Hopeless Romantic To The Stars With Too Much Compassion For His Own Good), particularly the ones penned by roachpatrol and urbanAnchorite. It's not the refined, brilliantly crafted epic I had first envisioned when I set out to write it, but seeing as Homestuck itself is drawing to a close I feel like it's time to get what's likely to be my only significant contribution out there.


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